INTELLIGENT DESIGN: WHAT IS IT?
Thursday, 14 October 2004
By Professor Williams
Just moving on from the election whinging...
I was thinking about 'Intelligent Design', what is it and what it could mean.
Actually it might be relevant to the Oz 2004 election because the Family First party may want it taught in schools as an exchange for the selling of Telstra. So intelligent design, what is it and who, or what, is behind the people proposing it?
My understanding is, and it is a little bit rudimentary, is that intelligent design proponents think that the complexity of our biological systems is such that it is not possible to explain it by evolution. ‘How can something so complicated, so exquisite in it’s mechanisms, full of checks and balances, be explained by a process that, when it comes down to it, is basically chance’ they might say. There must be a guiding principal, a helping hand, behind the wonder of biology. Maybe another intelligence, Maybe God.
This idea of an outside designer of the biologic world has also had its proponents when looking at our universe’s physical behaviour as well. The way atoms and parts of atoms behave is too seamless, too well put together, to be explained by the chance encounter of random energy and particles with each other. “God does not play dice” Einstein said. The ID proponents would agree, and would then argue that if God is not playing dice then he must be playing creation.
Well how about coming at this from another angle. Science, as all of mankind’s intellectual endeavours, is just another thought process we use to model our world. Just like religion is too. A way of explaining the way things are. So we use science as an explanation and tool to understand how the universe and all its biological creatures work. And using these tools and theories it is beginning to appear that chance, or evolution if you like, could not describe properly our world and all the creatures in it. But remember it is with these tools of science that we only know of this biological complexity. So in fact it is the process of science, our thought processes, which are describing what could not be made by chance. Could it not be that in actual fact it is our thoughts, our wills if you will, that are really creating the complexity of life. In other words, if we are the ones who have discovered this intelligent design, doesn’t it mean that we have the same intelligence as this aforementioned designer?
Maybe we, or at least those who have an understanding of this biological complexity we face, are just re-discovering something that we knew all along?
That we are the designers! We are the guiding hands behind the entire universe!
Well, at least some of us are. And why should we, and I do include myself in this, be kept from assuming our mantles as the supreme beings of this universe? If you cannot understand the design you must not have been a designer and ipso facto must be sub-designer, perhaps even sub-human.
For us human gods the time has come for us to throw off our self-imposed shackles and take our place as world leaders, guiding ourselves and our sheep onwards and upwards to immortality and non-stop orgies!
Ladies and gentleman I present myself to you today as your Lord and Master!
Worship me or die!
Prof Williams
Xenox research Institute
